The Asian Banker’s survey across financial institutions (FIs) in seven countries in Asia reveals emerging trends in cybersecurity risks and fraud, pressing challenges and technology areas prioritised.

Alipay emerges as the best platform, driven by its impressive performance in coverage, connectivity and ecosystem, while GCash excels in customer base, usage and engagement, and Wise scores on performance

The Asian Banker held its 22nd Excellence in Retail Financial Services Convention, presenting the first global rankings of the best retail and digital finance institutions in the world published by TABInsights. Incorporating the Heads of Retail Finance Annual Meeting, the first in-person event, in three years, was held in Hanoi, Vietnam.

As corporates diversify their supply chain sourcing, there is a rapid shift in how banks are meeting their procurement and financing needs through innovation and digitalisation. To respond to greater demand for time-to-market, Standard Chartered Bank drives ecosystem connectivity and access to its financing solutions via third-party platform and fintech partnerships.

The failure of Silicon Valley, Silvergate and Signature banks was caused by asset-liability mismatches, interest rate hikes and insufficient diversification, with many other US banks set to crack

Sam Everington, CEO of Engine, Starling Bank’s technology arm, discussed the advantages of the cloud-native and modular Software-as-a-Service banking platform, and its plans for expansion.

US financial regulators have announced damage-control measures for the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen promised that there will be no taxpayer-funded bailout. SVB's undoing ranks just behind the largest bank failure in US history of Washington Mutual in 2008. New-York based Signature Bank was seized by the FDIC two days after SVB was shuttered.

By combing various technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, 5G, and internet of things, edge computing is a viable solution to issues such as data latency, waste of bandwidth and possible security breaches.

Paytech provider Wise, launched 15 new partnerships and four new markets in 2022 and enters 2023 with 60 partners globally.

Most parts of the world and advanced economies such as the United States and European Union are expected to experience a significant slowdown in growth from 2.7% in 2022 to just 1.2% in 2023. However, growth in the emerging and developing economies are forecasted to continue to rise moderately from 3.9% in 2022 to 4% in 2023.

Joe Studwell, author of the book How Asia Works, shared his insights on the development of economies in Asia, China and Africa with The Asian Banker’s Emmanuel Daniel.

BIS Innovation Hub in its report, Project mBridge: Connecting economies through CBDC, has validated the proposition that CBDCs can substantially increase the speed of cross-border payments and settlement from multiple days to near real-time, while also reducing transactional costs of approximately $120 billion annually. More importantly, it allows EMDEs to use their national currencies and financial institutions to facilitate cross-border settlement, eliminating their exposure to the collateral effects of the monetary policies of the jurisdictions of major currencies and attendant financial stability risks, such as credit cycles, of the developed economies whose currencies, eg. the US and the dollar, the EU and the euro, etc., dominate international settlement today. In addition, it will lessen liquidity risks arising from disruptions in international financial markets and currencies of these developed economies.

Ping An Bank uses financial technology to create smart and inclusive products for traditionally underserved small businesses

Ijarah is a type of financing in Islamic banking that allows a client to use bank-owned assets or property for a specified period in exchange for rent. It is an approved form of financing in Islamic law for those who may not have the resources to acquire assets to meet their needs.

The financial services industry in Southeast Asia has seen the entry of standalone challenger digital banks, and while incumbents are competing by investing in digital-only banking experiments, creating a path to profitability will be the ultimate measure of success for these new businesses.